


A Synth Doesn't Need To.

by CeeceePepper



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Existentialism, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, far harbor spoilers, i just made a drabble abt nick, nick is a sad bean but he got better, sad but it gets better i promise, sorry - Freeform, thats the canon story anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeeceePepper/pseuds/CeeceePepper
Summary: A synth doesn’t need to eat. To sleep. To ponder, to wonder, to look at the stars and see beauty. A synth doesn’t need to bathe, drink, feel things for others. A synth doesn’t need to be kind, or mean, or barter weapons with Arturo, or flicker your gaze to a guard that doesn’t feel right.A synth doesn’t need to love, but in a way, you wished you could.And while a synth doesn’t need to, somewhere in the digital heart you had created from the basic 1’s and 0’s, you found the capacity to want to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS JUST A DRABBLE I MADE. I reference both Hancock and Ellie having feelings for Nick, and he's super confused, but probably just really asexual. Because he's, yknow. No-Dick Nicky.
> 
> There's some vulgarities and a CHUNK of it is sad, but I was proud enough with this to post it. Enjoy!
> 
> Please tell me if there are any grammatical or editing errors; this is un-Beta'd.

It was the mantra you'd grown a distaste for, if synths could taste.

 

A synth doesn't need to.

 

There were so many things it applied to. It was the first thing loaded into your system, before anything else, when you woke up in the trash can all those years ago. It was the first thing instilled in your mind, when you met ‘humans’, the very people that had created you. You knew you were Nick Valentine --- or, at the very least, a  _ copy _ of Nick Valentine. The second thing that was loaded into your system, was to help people.

 

A synth doesn’t need to, but you wanted to. It made a difference, and you often found that people didn’t trust you more than they did, but for good reason; you also, in those same instances, found that Synths loved using you as target practice while your naked, coatless body ran the streets of Massachusetts looking for friends and people to help. It wasn’t until you found some clothes and the prayer that was Diamond City, did your life start to feel like any sort that it should, that you had learned what life was supposed to feel like, from all the books you had read and all the info you had inherited from Nick Valentine. Now, living, was a different question altogether.

 

A synth doesn’t need to live. And soon, you found other things.

 

A synth doesn’t need to eat. To sleep. To ponder, to wonder, to look at the stars and see beauty. A synth doesn’t need to bathe, drink, feel things for others. A synth doesn’t need to be kind, or mean, or barter weapons with Arturo, or flicker your gaze to a guard that doesn’t feel right.

  
Late at night, when Ellie is asleep, you’d gaze at her and your yellow irises would flicker over her body like a firefly, curious as to what she was doing. And, eventually, though she knew you did this, she allowed it. Thinking of that sing-song rhythm that had become those words, you felt a sinking in your stomach, or wherever one would’ve been. You felt a pang in where your heart might’ve, at one point, been in. But you didn’t have any of those things, and you knew it was simply a generated figment of something coming from your circuits, because deep down in the 1s and 0s you knew that a synth doesn’t need to gaze at Ellie Perkins and think she’s as beautiful and kind as the world that once was, and you swipe those thoughts and data away from yourself like chalk on a board. You stopped looking to her late at night, and found yourself much rather sucking yourself into one of Piper’s latest papers, wondering what illuminati scheme that she had come up with about the mayor this night.

 

You took cases, that sometimes led you to places you didn’t want to go to. Sometimes, you saw faces that you missed; sometimes, you saw faces you wished you could forget. Most of the time, however, you saw faces that were covered in dirt, blood, grime, the faces that you’d have to report back to a family, about how it was never going to move again because raiders are savages and the wasteland of Massachusetts was a place of murder and deceit; and after that, the faces would multiply into groups of those who are disappointed that you didn’t make it in time, that are sad they cannot see that one anymore. You wished people would feel that way about you, but then you remember, synths don’t need to wish about that, nor hope for it, because you are a synth. You will be remembered as a synth. A synth with a spiffy hat. Your life continues.

 

You got kidnapped at a train station, after you went to go save a girl. She turned out to be dating the man who ‘stole’ her, and you turned out to be their end goal anyways, so there you sat for days and days in a vault, wondering when they’d load a clip into your circuiting and end that mantra that haunted you like a ghost you’d never have. They didn’t. You were saved by a man named Nate, who let you out and with a kind smile took you back to the warm and loving arms of Ellie Perkins, who cried into you and confided that she was so afraid you would’ve been gone. You wanted to cry with her, but a synth doesn’t need to cry, and it broke the heart you made in your coding just a little bit more than it already had been for all those years. You simply comforted her, to the best of your ability, and you agreed to help out Nate when he needed to find his son. It would be a new adventure for the two of you. That night, when all had left, and you were to stay alone with your assistant, she pulled up her chair and asked to talk. And, in a way, you loved every time she wanted to talk, whether it was a case or not. Ellie was intelligent about how people were and how they acted and why they acted the way they did; you learned plenty from a girl who’d barely been taught to read when she was little. You remember that the moment she sat a hand on your leg, put her head on your shoulder, and muttered the words synths were never to hear, you didn’t know what to do. You told her that, in a way, synths didn’t need to love, and didn’t have a romantic capacity. You apologized profusely, but Ellie just understood and nodded. You two sat there, a good long while, and while you remembered that a synth doesn’t need to, you still cared deeply for Ellie. You just put your arm around her like you saw those old magazines had, and you read your latest case report, until hours later when she finally got up and went to bed.

 

A synth doesn’t need to love, but in a way, you wished you could.

 

You hung out with Hancock, when Ellie had to go do other things for a bit, or when you didn’t have a case. Hancock was kind, but on more than one occasion, you remember him getting a little too close or friendly with you; he would always back off by the time you showed visible discomfort, but perhaps in a way, he found that to be some kind of endearment. In a way, his teasing made you smile, without fail, but it was also something you tried to equate to a little bit of humanity. When he’d playfully shove you, you’d just chortle under what would’ve been your equivalent of a breath, and he would light up like a firework. In a way, you two got along too well. You used to be a cop, even if you were a copy, and now you were no longer a ‘human’; as existential as you could get sometimes, Hancock very easily leveled you. He was simply a ghoul because he took too many drugs, he doped himself up too much, and he became what many humans considered to be a savage beast. You suffered similar stigmas, and while watching Hancock pop pills and chug them down with a bottle of whiskey, you couldn’t help but both shame and admire the poor guy. He was doing whatever he wanted, and he didn’t care what others thought, but at the same time, the chems must’ve slowly been killing him at that point. Where pills couldn’t, you understood that bullets could, and you tried your best in every instance to keep him alive.

 

You had a few times where it happened; and while a synth doesn’t need to care, you find the capacity to. You’ve taken bullets for him, you remembered the days where your circuiting cut out and the world became a black void for you, no thought, only silence and an overwhelming death that was becoming insanity at it’s finest. Once you would awake, you’d be greeted by those black eyes that somehow, through all the radiation, could still manage to make tears fall on the cratered skin. An old synth that was made after a detective shouldn’t have had the mayor of Goodneighbor gripping your shirt with his fists and shaking you, yelling and sobbing to you about how stupid you were for trying to save him. In the same instance that you lifted a metal hand to his reddened face and told him you were sorry, you wished that synths needed to have a will to live. But they didn’t.

 

Taking a bullet didn’t feel like anything to you, nor did anything else.

 

You met your brother DiMA, while on a trip with Nate to far harbor. He was interesting, to say the least. He was kind. He liked puns, and he had nowhere near the personality that you had been given. Originally, you treated him as alien. He had no personality, no heart, no nothing, and he was constantly strapped up to the ceiling, trapped by the cords he was using to keep himself alive. He was more trapped than you were physically, but mentally, you saw DiMA as a metaphorical mirror of what you felt like. After coming to terms with him, you eventually were coming on your own accord. The two of you would play checkers while you finally, in hundreds of years it felt like, had somebody to confide in. He gave you the hope to know that you had  _ some  _ degree of humanity, and while neither of you fully could replicate the feelings and emotions of a human, you came to terms with the fact that outside of the coding, you were Nick Valentine, a compassionate and deeply kind soul that simply wanted to help people. And while you loved the idea, and you became entranced with the concept that you were more than just a synth that was in soft velvety skin, you also had abilities that even surpassed some humans.

 

You remember one of the more recent nights, where you went home, and while synths don’t need to show affection, you scooped Ellie up in your arms and spun her around, listening to Atom Bomb Baby as she squawked in surprise and her hair came undone.

 

That night, you remember Ellie was so happy, she shone like the sun. You remember how she seemed to glow as you both mutually learned how to dance based off each other, and how when you twirled her to a song, she laughed like she was on Cloud Nine. Her face had grown in color, and you hadn’t ever witnessed that before unless Ellie was embarrassed. The next day, you told DiMA about it; he only gave you a coy smile and taught you that even if a synth didn’t need to, Nick had the ability to  _ want _ to, and that alone could be enough to open boundaries that hadn’t existed for Nick before.

 

A little after that, the mantra got quieter. You did some things you hadn’t even known before, things you didn’t think synths could do, wanted to do, or  _ were capable of. _ You began eating the noodles in Diamond City and talking to Takahashi. You became good friends with Doc Sun, who was more than happy to talk to you about biology; you talked to Piper, and she gave you leads to go your hearts way to find. While the mantra was quiet, it was still there. Some nights were more difficult than others, but you’d find yourself going home just to hear Ellie praising you for centuries on how great you were. It helped. When you saw your wirey, metal hand holding hers, it still hurt you to think about, but she would simply play with the wires and let her gentle manicure tap against the metal, and she would sometimes make a song out of it. It helped. Synths didn’t need to feel that way, but you always did, somehow.

 

You experienced whatever the ‘sexual’ part of things, the thing that humans did when they liked each other, or something. And, not surprisingly, it was initiated by John fucking Hancock. He’d gotten way too high, and he asked you to look towards him; and while you knew he was high, you still listened to him. Those oddly holey lips were against whatever valour-like lips you had on your face, and he had gotten a little closer than he ever really had. You didn’t really feel anything, but you let him do as he pleased, because it didn’t bother you. Synths didn’t need to have sex, they weren’t built for that purpose, so you weren’t as surprised as Hancock was when he shoved a hand under your pants, proceeded to grin, and call you ‘No-Dick Nicky’. The name stuck, and so did Hancock to your side for a good hour that night, just trying to see what he could get to do, before you insisted you had to go. You really just wanted to check up on Ellie, but more importantly, Hancock’s stupidity during his high would more than likely cause you to lose a tie or a hat or a belt, something you didn’t want to lose to his exploration. You simply scoffed whenever he whistled to your disheveled look.

 

You went home to Ellie, told her about the ordeal, and she seemed a little upset. Hearing that it didn’t effect you gave her some cooldown time, but otherwise, she simply went to sleep that night. A synth doesn’t need to follow a human unless they need to, so you simply stayed downstairs and read until you figured out that you had a ‘sleep’ function in your system, and you used it whilst putting your head in your arms and leaning to your desk. You woke to Ellie putting a blanket on you, one that you didn’t need, but accepted anyways. You could hear that mantra the whole night, even under the comfort of the blanket that probably smelled like her. It was the mantra you'd grown a distaste for, if synths could taste. A synth doesn't need to feel these sorts of things, or wants. But you weren’t just a synth, you were Nick Valentine.

  
And while a synth doesn’t need to, somewhere in the digital heart you had created from the basic 1’s and 0’s, you found the capacity to want to. And once you got the inch, you would go the full yard, and the full yard was slowly turning into something you could hear like a hymn; not like the mantra you had heard, but something greater.

 

And while a synth doesn’t need to, you could still find the capacity to.


End file.
